I have a mid-2011 Mac mini with USB 2.0. I want to use this drive for Time Machine. Is this a bad idea, given the relative slowness of USB 2.0?
23753
I used 2.0. I have Snow leopard IMAC 21" (from about 2010) desk top.I Had great... easy hook up and worked for quite awhile with no problems then stopped backing up and could not re set it after several tries.
23754
I use mine to back up Time Machine on a daily basis. It operates in the background and I never know if its slow or not. Not a problem for me.
831516
Hi, Although I have 2 older MacBooks I installed this drive on, it seems to be ok on the Mac Mini also. I would suggest you check out YouTube first and search "Mac Mini 2011 hard drive and ram upgrade." You really need to check out the specs on your specific machine too. There are space considerations, not just will it work. The guy on YouTube was using this drive as a secondary drive. Also, try Googling your situation. That's how I figure things out. Hope this helps. Steve R.
1602195
Yes, I use it for that. I did use apple disc utility and partitioned mine for 1tb to be used specifically for time machine though. If you need all 4 for just backups it should work. That seems excessive though to me
1758840
I am not sure but since everyone I know uses Mac and this external drive and many are on latest version of Mac, I would HIGHLY suspect that it will work just fine. This drive, with Time Machine, totally ROCKS. It is the best investment you could make.
1147252
It doesn't work like a USB hard drive in that you connect it and you're off and going. However, you can use it as a network hard drive. What will happen is when you connect to a network with a Time Capsule on it (either as the primary router or as a network extender), it will show up under the "Shared" group of drives. This is similar to how other computers would be displayed if you have several computers on your home network and you enable file sharing between them (Windows machines, Linux machines, and other Macs). You'll be able to store and access files on the Time Capsule as if they were stored on your internal hard drive, as long as you're on the same network as the Time Capsule. There's no partitioning needed for this. However, do keep in mind that you'll have a file called (your computer's name).sparsebundle on the Time Capsule drive. This is your Time Machine backup. Unless the file becomes corrupt and your Mac gives you an error message like "Unable to use your current backup file, would you like to create a new one?" DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE. If you delete this file, YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF YOUR TIME MACHINE BACKUP DATA. Hope this helps.
420474
I have a MacBook Pro OS 10.8.4 and it works great with it. I use it as a backup disk with Time Machine.
508476
I got my iMac in December 2011, so I'm fairly sure it's also only running USB2, and I've had no problems running this drive. I can't imagine you should have any difficulty. Especially since it's such an easy drive to set up.
180412
I'm using it with a 2011 MacBook Pro. No problems encountered. Using it for straight file copies as well as time machine. I don;t know about firmware.
1330306
I don't think so because if you use thunderbolt on Mac; the drive get very hot and automatically reject itself. But USB 3.0 will be fine and the drive is speed nearly the same for both USB 3.0 and thunderbolt.
1303112
Not quite sure what the question is but I use drive on a mac book pro. As far as USB goes it is a 3.0 USB drive and is compatible with a USB port. From my understanding all 3.0 USB devices are downward compatible with 2.0 ports. They just are a little slower, the 3.0 device will run at 2.0 speeds. Hop this answered your question.
2128284
According to both the online documentation and the documents that came with the drive, the answer is yes. I can also offer my own experience as I've been using these drives with both my older iMac w/USB 2.0 interface and my new iMac w/USB 3.0 interface and both work as expected. USB 2.0 speeds are MUCH slower than USB 3.0 speeds, so expect that your throughput will be lower than the max throughput indicated on the docs; plugged into a USB 2.0 slot, the drive will operate at USB 2.0 speeds. I hope that helps! Let me know if you have other questions.
1557701
If your MAC is equipped with a USB 3 port use it to connect the drive. Ignore Firewire. If you only have a USB2 port available, use Firewire. Fastest connection possible is USB 3 with current technology!
147031
I have a 2012 mac mini running OS 10.8.5 and the 2TB version of this and it works but it seems to go to sleep frequently telling me in the midst of working on something that I disconnected it improperly. That's been a frequent annoyance as it mens I have to start over or stop everything to wake it back up again and usually re-do what I was working on. I have not lost any data and it seems to work fine as a hard drive but I never have this problem with the Seagate HD.
336288
I have used the drive (3TB version) about 5 months on my iMac as the time machine with no problems. Set up was flat simple. My old (somewhat full) time machine drive is still attached to the iMac as an auxiliary drive.
2041091
Unless there is some oddity in those files there shouldn't be a problem. The "special" Mac-ness of this drive is that it is able to be used as a backup drive with Time machine - not all drives will support that. AFAIK
1454404
Frankly, I don't think it even can be said to "work" at all. Even if one accepts the terrible Windows software and the glllaaaciallll transfer speeds, mine up and spontaneously reset itself and *lost all saved data*. If you're already in the Mac ecosystem anyway, why look anywhere else than a Time Capsule? Designed from the get-go to work with the OS, integrates wonderfully and has fabulous (well, compared to Seagate) support (if you're near an Apple store).
1363109
As far as I am aware, there shouldn't be an issue. While we use it for back-ups on our Macs, we do not use it specifically on the time machine.